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Darrera modificació: 2023-12-06
Bases de dades: Sciència.cat
Rosa, Igor, "From Scitia to Sarmatia - – Medical Use of Beaver's Body Parts from the Antiquity to the Early Modern Period", Historia Medicinae Slovaca, [= Zahraniční lekári na Slovensku. Slovenskí lekári v zahraničí] 2 (2018), 7-24.
- Resum
- In the paper we will investigate the history and use of castoreum and other beaver's bodyparts. Castoreum – a secretion of beaver's scent glands was mentioned in several antique, medieval and early-modern texts. The ancient medicine perceived it as a panaceum which cured numerous diseases by exciting blood flow. The approach towards this substance varied between different authors. The motif of castoreum appeared as early as The Histories by Herodotus, the author wrongly identified beaver's scent glands with its testicles – a mistake which followed the motif for centuries. Castoreum was included in several antique compendia as a paradoxographical curiosity, an element of creature's anatomy and a medical substance. In The Natural History by Pliny the Elder castoreum was described twice in utterly diverse manner (scientific and paradoxographical). In some sources we can observe a puzzling attribution of the origin of the effective castoreum to the regions of the Black Sea. The early Christian thought and the demise of ancient scientific paradigms led to a transformation of the motif, which appears in Physiologus and Etymologies by Isidor of Seville. As most of the medical and anatomical information is lost in those description, a history of creature's autocastration becomes the major point of interest for the authors. The revival of antique thought and new scholastic method introduced in late XII c. combined all the traditions, sometimes in a contradictory manner. The early-modern text relate greatly on medieval knowledge and introduce very little new information, however they are edited in national languages (in the paper only Polish texts were used) and present local scope on the matter. The practical use of castoreum was also researched into. Several sources present the use of castoreum up until 19th c.
- Matèries
- Medicina - Farmacologia
Història natural - Animals
Història de la medicina
- URL
- https://www.academia.edu/36858575/From_Scitia_to_Sa ...
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